It's going to behave just like 0 so there shouldn't be any problem with accepting it. Django is not going add additional requirement for "valid decimal" beyond what Python already imposes.

If you want to get rid of the negative sign for display purposes you can always just multiply zero-valued critical_nfr values with themselves to ensure they have positive sign. (If you are determined to reject such entries you can use the is_signed Decimal method to detect the situation: ​http://docs.python.org/library/decimal.html#decimal.Decimal.is_signed.)